


In The Event of Something Happening to Me

by JustOnlyGinger



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ghostly Blowjobs, M/M, Sex Haunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-02 09:46:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4055467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustOnlyGinger/pseuds/JustOnlyGinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you believe in that stuff? The dead coming back to fuck with the living?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A few weeks after Falk is buried, he starts appearing in Watts' dreams. There's nothing especially weird about that, and Watts even enjoys it at first; he'd had dreams like this after his granny died, where he's sitting at the kitchen table in his old house and there she is across from him with her cigarettes and coffee and overflowing ashtray and everything just like it was when he still lived there and she was alive, down to the blue and white pattern on her coffee cup and the smell of wild roses and horse manure blowing through the open window.

Falk is like that at first, smiling with his lips rolled away from his teeth the way Win always said was "ass-clenchingly terrifying" but Watts always kind of liked. Well, they never did agree about him, but that was because Win was jealous, and didn't Watts have enough time for both of them? That was one thing he always had, especially then, on the ship. Time to sit and think and wonder whether anyone really liked him and why his life was so disappointing and what the hell he was supposed to do with himself in this crazy place. Sometimes back then he kind of wondered if there was a god. Maybe all of this meant something. Maybe he wasn't alone up here. Why not?

Falk talks about stuff like that, in the dreams. In that sexy accent he has, Dutch or something, Watts doesn't remember but it makes him sound like he has a mouthful of gravel in the most attractive way possible.

"Jenner," he says one night, "would you believe the answer to that mystery hasn't been revealed to me either? I think there is some kind of divine presence, yes, but without physical evidence, without a body of any kind, who can say?"

"You don't have a body."

"That may be true, little one, but I do have the universal will to continue to exist that resides in every living or once-living being."

"I don't get it." Watts reaches across the table- the same old wide-plank farmhouse table from his gran's kitchen-- and touches the sleeve of Falk's shirt. "I can't feel anything. It's like you're gone."

"I haven't gone anywhere." Falk smiles his wide shark-toothed smile again and stubs out his cigarette in Pauline Watts' pink ceramic horse head ashtray. "I'm still here. It's just a matter of time before I'm able to be with you again, in a corporeal sense."

"I know where your body is. I saw you get buried. How are you supposed to get here from there? And your coffin, that thing's gotta weigh a thousand pounds, how would you--"

"Shush. It doesn't matter. I'm already here." Watts wakes up then, alone in the bed he usually shares with Win. On the undented pillow beside him, as if someone placed it there, is the leather collar he'd worn when Edison owned him. He's pretty sure, when he'd turned in earlier that night, it had been hanging where it usually did, on its nail in the wall above the headboard. If it had fallen- and how could it have?-- it would've landed on his side of the bed.

A few nights later- Win still away at a business conference on Titan, Frost and his wife on an overnight trip to New Des Moines-- Watts wakes to the new and not entirely unwelcome sensation of a freezing-cold tongue on his cock. He gasps wordlessly, struggles against some huge heavy thing holding him down, like the weight of a grown man seated squarely on his chest. He can't move, can't breathe, can't draw in enough air to scream. It's him, he tells himself, it's only Leo, there's no reason to be scared.

"Come on," he says, when the weight pressing him into the mattress shifts enough for him to take a deep breath. "I can't see you. If you're here, let me see you!" Then the weight lifts altogether and he springs upright, wide awake and dripping sweat and tangled in damp sheets. He screams as loud as his bruised lungs will let him, scrabbling around for the light switch and kicking his way out of the bedclothes as his heart pounds fast and angry, hard enough probably to burst the fuck out of his rib cage.

"What happened?" It's Andrej in the doorway, slamming the lights on, Vivian in her nightgown and slippers not far behind him.

"You screamed," she says, glancing nervously around the room, hesitating at the threshold with one hand on Andrej's arm. "What is it? Is someone here?"

"Leo." Watts' throat is dry, and he can barely croak the name out. "At least I think it was him."

"Go back to sleep." Vivian's expression slips from fear to sympathy to disgust. "You had a bad dream." She turns and stomps away, and Watts can hear her footsteps all the way along the hall and down the carpeted stairs. Then her door slams, and Andrej shakes his head, looking at Watts like he really should've known better.

"Do you have to do this? Every night, these dreams. You're upsetting her. Falk is- the man's dead and in the ground."

"I know he's dead. I know. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry. I know how he treated you. You miss him, it's all right. You don't have to hate him like she does." Andrej opens the nightstand drawer, takes out Win's bottle of round black pills. He holds out his hand to Watts, two little flying saucers resting on his palm.

"Here. I think you need some help."

"I can't. What if he comes back?"

"There's no life after death, Jenner."

"Yes there is. We're alive."

“You know it wasn't that, for us. We never really died.” Andrej places the two tiny pills on the bedspread. “Now go to sleep and rest. Goodnight, Jenner.” Once he's gone, the lights turned out, everything still and quiet and dark, Watts swallows the pills, lays his head down again and prepares to go to sleep. He thinks about it, how Andrej is right; he must be right, but Watts doesn't understand how. There's a difference between what happened to him hundreds of years ago in that Carson City hospital and whatever had made a corpse out of Leo Falk, but that's as much as Watts can figure out.

Falk keeps showing up, night after night, dream after nightmare after waking dream, no matter how many of the little black pills Watts takes. He looks like he did when he was alive, just as tall and handsome, and fuck does Watts have a weakness for tall guys who dress nice and walk like they own the world, like everything around them is their goddamn kingdom.

“You know Andrej,” Watts says; he's dreaming, sitting at the foot of his bed in his own childhood bedroom while Falk stands in front of the mirror adjusting his tie. “He says I shouldn't listen to you. You're not real. You're just me, dressed up like you. A version of you, the way I wish you were.”

“That's quite a theory.” Falk turns and faces him, smiles that smile that makes Watts feel like the ground is dropping out from under him, like being on a roller coaster, dizzy and delicious at the same time. “Would you like to test me? I know things you couldn't possibly have known. Yours was the last face I saw before I died. Did you know that? Losing air, lungs failing, throat closing up, redness and darkness closing in and then! There right in front of me, your pretty face. It's a good thing there are no angels, God knows I would have found them disappointing.”

“Now that's something I never would've said to myself.”

“Exactly. No angels, no Paradise. How could you know what I know?”

“So what is there instead? What's it like up there?”

“There's no up. Only void, directionless. Soundless. No voices except the ones calling me back, telling me I'm not yet finished here.”

“Just nothing? That's stupid.” Watts is dreaming, knows he's dreaming, knows he can't get up and cross the room and grab Falk's sleeve and pull him back until they both fall down onto the bed; the rule, somehow, is that Falk only exists as long as Watts doesn't touch him.

“I can only speak for myself. I can't say it's the same for everyone.” Falk smiles at Watts in the mirror, and the air around him seems to shimmer and turn gold, like when sunlight pours out around the edges of a cloud. “This is your dream, Jenner. This was your house, wasn't it?”

“Yeah. I lived here. This was my room.”

“Fanciful, don't you think? It looks like a girl's room.” Falk's running a hand over the smooth top of the blondwood dresser, which is draped in lace doilies and crowded with knicknacks; a small brass clock, glass bowls and bottles and vases, horses made of wood and ceramic and plastic and cast-iron. Watts' collection, which he hasn't seen in years. A herd of plastic ponies, a rearing stallion made of painted chalkware, an antique gold-handled brush with Watts' hair still caught in the bristles; he remembers every object Falk's poring over, but he can't touch them either.

“In the country where I was born,” Falk's saying, “a long long time ago, before the sun turned black and the earth froze, there were peat bogs where in ancient times the people had buried their dead. Some of them were human sacrifices, offered in exchange for a richer harvest, or kinder weather. One in particular; I remember reading about him. A boy, small-statured, undernourished. Pretty face. He could have been you.”

“I don't follow.”

“Don't you see, Jenner? We've had many lives, each of us. You were once this boy, led out onto the bog in the dead of night with a rope around your neck. Blindfolded, terrified, naked in the cold mud. Did you beg them to spare you, or did you accept your fate?”

“There's no such thing. There are no other lives.”

“Aren't there? Isn't it true? Haven't you died many times now? Under the peat or under the ice, lying cold and quiet as centuries went by. Isn't it always someone like me who's there to recover your remains, to scrape away the mud and frost, to kiss your dead lips and breathe life into you again?”

“It's not true,” Watts says. “I don't know what you're talking about. I was never in a bog, and the ice was different. I didn't die then, I just stopped for a while.”

“Cold and naked, shivering in the frigid Northern European spring, only your long hair to cover you. And the men who brought you there, what did they want? Why did they insist that you be stripped to enact the ritual? Did they fuck you, Jenner? You were drugged, too weak to resist, too hungry. If you were going to be offered to their gods, they were going to have their fun with you first.”

“What a story. You know you're making this up.”

“In a poetic and just universe, isn't it possible? It's easy to draw the parallel. You were a human sacrifice, and if it weren't for your gods I never would have met you.” Falk turns then, faces Watts with hairbrush in hand, starts toward him; he blurs out of focus, the room goes bright and then dark, and Watts wakes.

It's as startling as always, throwing him bolt upright in bed, breathing heavily, skin covered with goosebumps. 

He reaches for Win's old tablet computer on the nightstand next to him, cradles the little machine to his chest until his breathing slows and his heartbeat evens out. He turns it on and brings up the messaging app that Win taught him to use- and that it was called an “app” and not a “thing” or a “game”-- but none of the icons are lit up and everyone's probably gone to bed. He doesn't dare go wake up Andrej; after almost a week of this, he and Vivian have stopped even pretending to be sympathetic, and Watts can't really blame them.

“I'm here,” Watts says aloud, softly, to the soft violet glow of the empty room. All the familiar objects are here, all the things belonging to his and Win's life together. Win loves him, and Frost loves him, and he was ready to lay Falk to rest; not to forget him, not ever, but to keep him in his memory, in the place where the dead belong. To stop expecting to see him on a street corner or in a restaurant, to hear his knock some night on his closed bedroom door.

“I'm here.” A little louder, not enough to wake Andrej or Vivian, who Watts can picture in their own bedrooms, peacefully sunk in their separate and ordinary dreams, never tossing or turning or crying out or springing up suddenly at the brush of a cold hand or a dead weight falling across their chest. “Where are you now? Come and get me if you want me. If I'm not really just dreaming.” He waits for a long time, lying on his back, perfectly still, skin prickling with sweat. Nothing comes to him, no voices whisper in his ear. He's really alone now, only his dreams for company. He falls asleep again, finally, but Falk doesn't return. Only claustrophobia, crawling, low dark tunnels, cold forgotten places hollowed out under the earth.

The next morning, Watts is exhausted, as if he hasn't slept in a hundred years. He half-falls out of bed, realizes he's naked, doesn't remember having taken his shirt and shorts off the night before but there they are wadded up in the sheets, as if he'd kicked them to the foot of the bed. He dresses wearily and crawls downstairs for breakfast, and his heart does somersaults when he sees Frost buttering toast at the kitchen table, his suitcase and overnight bag on the floor beside him. Watts closes the remaining distance between them in a series of leaps and flings himself into Frost's arms, nearly knocking them both to the floor.

“Shit,” Frost gasps when he recovers his breath. “Someone miss me a little?”

“I'm sorry, I just... It was-- I'm not used to it. Having no one to sleep with.”

“And here I thought you'd be glad to have a bit of a break.” Frost brushes Watts' hair back and kisses him- Watts fucking loves it when Frost kisses him, that big warm mouth and that strong tongue and the feel of stubble scraping against his chin-- and Watts tastes strong tea and raspberry jam and something kind of gritty and ashy like Frost's been sneaking cigarettes again.

“You, darling,” Frost says, between hungry enveloping kisses, “are absolutely delightful, as always. Think we should go upstairs?”

“Can we go to your room?”

“Sonia's in there. She's sleeping.” Frost leans back in Watts' embrace, looks at him with mild concern, eyes narrowed, the crease between them deepening. “Something the matter, love?”

“You're going to think I'm crazy.” Reluctantly, Watts untangles himself from Frost and sits in the kitchen chair nearest him. Overcome with sudden weariness, he props his elbows on the table and rests his chin in both hands. Fuck, what he wouldn't give to be able to sleep again, without the past gnawing at him. His gran's house, his old room, ice and deep water, Falk's folded hands all waxy and creased the way they looked the last time Watts ever saw him- what was the word he used?-- corporeally. Falk lying in his coffin; he had seemed to be at rest. Watts had been shaky, swaying and knock-kneed with shock and misery, but he'd never once wished for this, oh god, he hadn't ever wanted Falk to rise again.

“I already think you're crazy,” deadpans Frost, buttering another piece of toast. He slides the plate over to Watts, pours him a fresh cup of tea. “Eat this and drink that, and tell me all about it. Whatever it is.”

“Ghosts. Haunting.” Watts breaks the warm piece of buttered bread in two, crams half of it in his mouth. “Do you believe in that stuff? The dead coming back to fuck with the living?” Frost looks suddenly very serious, leaning forward, eyebrows lowering like fuzzy gray-black stormclouds.

“Why, who is it? Whose ghost have you seen?” Watts takes a long swig of his tea, clears his throat and tells his tale. Frost follows it intently, nodding, stroking his chin as if deep in thought. At last, when Watts has rambled everything out, Frost sits up straight, drains the last of his tea, and slams the cup back down decisively on its saucer.

“I've heard of this sort of thing. I've seen it before. Come on.” He's up and heading for the stairs before Watts has time to register what's going on; Watts follows him at a careful distance, his bare feet soundless on the carpeted landing. When they reach the door of Win's room, Frost pauses and peers in cautiously, Watts lurking behind him, unsure whether just this second he's more nervous or embarrassed. It almost would've been better, he thinks, if Frost had laughed him off. Told him to stop being ridiculous, that what's dead and buried stays buried for good.

“No physical manifestations yet?” Frost is cautiously making his way towards the bed, setting his feet down very slowly and deliberately as if he's feeling the carpet itself for, fuck, Watts doesn't know, supernatural fibers. Or ectoplasm or something. Whatever it is ghosts are supposed to leave behind.

“I told you. I woke up and felt like something was holding me down.”

“Sleep paralysis. That's simple enough, or it would be if it weren't accompanied by these other phenomena.”


	2. Chapter 2

“What's the other phenomena?”

“Dreams. Premonitions. Odd feelings. Do you sometimes feel as if someone is watching you when you're alone in this room?”

“He is watching me. He said so.” Watts shivers, and even Frost looks spooked for a second. He crouches down near the bed like he's trying to look under it, but Watts knows there's nothing under there but clumps of dust and hair and piles of Win's old girlie magazines.

“Usually in cases like this there's some sort of object the spirit uses. Some talisman through which it can observe the living.”

“The collar.”

“What?”

“The collar, the old leather one. He must be using it for something.” Watts describes to Frost how he'd woken up with the collar in bed beside him, when he'd been reasonably sure that when he'd gone to sleep the night before it had been hanging on its nail in the wall as it always did.

“All right, so. Manipulation of physical objects. This is quite a manifestation we're dealing with here.” Frost really looks worried now, all those deep lines in his forehead, the kind you get from frowning too much, and wrinkles around his mouth showing too, long and straight and even like lines on a map.

“So he's fucking with my head and fucking with real stuff too. Like the collar.”

“I think it's best if I sleep with you tonight.” Frost nods, still looking concerned and serious. “I'll need to experience the phenomena for myself.”

“Are you sure that's going to work? What if I'm the only one who can see it? I mean, why just me, right, if he could've been fucking with your head too, or Mac's, this whole time then why wouldn't he be doing that?”

“We're talking about spirits here. They don't have the limitations we corporeal beings do.” Frost has lowered himself to the floor again, is looking for something under the bed. “Ah-ha!” he cries, lifting some tiny glinting thing up to the light. Watts' blood runs cold when he looks closer, sees that Frost is holding Leo Falk's diamond tie pin, the one that was stuck firmly through the knot of his tie on the day he was buried.

“That's bloody strange, isn't it?” is all Frost says, peering nearsightedly at the small object. It's unmistakable, the little doodad on the end shaped like a scallop shell with tiny diamonds inlaid in rows. Watts doesn't know where Falk had gotten it, but it seems unlikely that there'd be more than one; Vincent had taught him a few things about salvage back on the ship, read him lessons on the recovery and value of vintage goods. Staring at the pin held between Frost's fingers, Watts tries to speak and finds he can't so much as twitch his lip. He shakes his head, scrambles backward out of the room as fast as he can and retreats to the kitchen, where he rifles through all the cupboards until he finds Win's stash of powdered chocolate ice cream. He stays in the pantry the rest of the day, spooning chocolatey grit into his mouth straight from the foil bag and ignoring Frost's increasingly irritated attempts to dislodge him.

As night approaches, however, Watts begins to panic; he needs to find somewhere to sleep where Falk won't creep into his dreams. His first instinct is to stay in the pantry, but there's hardly enough room for him to lie down. Finally he ventures out, finds Frost sitting up on the couch in the TV room watching an old movie with the sound turned off.

“Well, there's the little squirrel. Nice to see you out of your burrow.” Frost still sounds vaguely annoyed, in between crunching on fistfuls of popcorn from the bowl on the table in front of him. “I hope you realize this is my dinner.”

“Sorry.” Watts sits down beside him and pulls the popcorn bowl into his lap. “I thought I'd be safe in there.”

“Were you?” Frost makes a noise halfway between a yawn and a groan, stretching his arms high over his head. “Maybe Andrej is right. Maybe this whole thing's gone on long enough.”

“It's not me. I'm not doing it.” That easily, Watts is panicked again; is he going to have to deal with this alone, to face Falk's accusations every time he closes his eyes? “Can't you help me? I can't make this stop happening.”

“Look,” says Frost. “It's plain you're upset. I'm tired, darling. I just got back from a long trip. I don't think there's much I can do to help you right now, but why don't you c'mere and sleep on the couch and I'll stay with you just for tonight.” Frost leans back into the cushions and pats his lap, and Watts lowers himself into it, curls up and closes his eyes. He tries to think of Frost's body as a wall around him, keeping him safe, keeping invaders out; like Hadrian's wall, the one the Romans built all the way up in the far north of England, the one whose stones were still there after thousands of years. Frost is like an old wall; rough-hewn and timeworn, plain and solid and strong.

“Good lad,” Frost says. He pulls the afghan over Watts and tucks it around him, and Watts is glad of the extra warmth. “Maybe if you tried remembering... just thinking of the good things. What you liked about him, how it felt when you were with him. Maybe that'll be enough to let him go.”

“Shh, Frosty.” Watts is half-asleep already, nestled deep into Frost's warm lap. “I'll try. Try to remember him...”

“Jenner.” Well, fuck. Watts is asleep, dreaming that he's alone in Win's bedroom again, and there's Falk. His voice anyway, but Watts can't tell where it's coming from. He's flat on his back, pinned there on the bed, his every effort to move met with strange resistance, as if he's too exhausted to get his muscles to work together long enough to lift his head up or reach out an arm.  
“I can tell you're not alone. You don't sleep alone much these days, do you? It's John Frost who's there with you, the other retro. I must say I love the two of you together. Alike, yet not alike. He knows where he stands with you, doesn't he? He was a man and you were a whore.”

“What are you talking about? I still can't see you.” Watts keeps struggling to sit up, even though something is telling him there's no point. “We were both the same thing. Whatever Edison wanted us to be.”

“Before that. Don't you remember? Your man Frost had a long and successful life. He worked, studied, had many friends, married a beautiful woman. He taught himself to cook and paint and play the guitar. He was fulfilled, and you lived like a shadow. A harried little ghost, always tired, always silent, always rattling your chains through the same corridors.”

“That wasn't my fault. I did what I had to. I wasn't lonely.”

“Not always. Not when you could woo some man into paying attention to you, but do you remember how unsatisfied you were? The one person who had known you was dead, and no one else cared enough to take her place. Men looked at you and saw a nice vacant little body, an ass they could fuck, a mouth that would suck them off for a reasonable price. Nothing of value beyond that, nothing of use or beauty or significance. You were like a woman, but not enough like one to capture any man's attention for very long.”


	3. Chapter 3

“What are you saying? What's the point of this?” Watts strains and struggles, but try as he might, he can't raise himself from the bed, and he can't see Falk, can't even tell where he is; if he's in the room corporeally, or just a disembodied voice.

“Was it difficult for you to be so worthless? Did you fear men, the ones you fucked, the ones who had power over you? You said it yourself, I remember. There's a certain kind of man who doesn't think much about killing a whore.”

“Leave me alone. I haven't slept in a fucking week.”

“Leave you alone? I thought you wanted me with you. I thought you needed company.”

“Frost. He's here. He's with me now. He loves me, and you never did. You couldn't even pretend you did. You were just like them!”

“Like who, Jenner?”

“Hyatt's friends. The ones who... I couldn't say no to them. I didn't want to piss them off. I didn't want him to leave me, so I let them do whatever they wanted. And after that, years and years later, those guys who'd come to me and fuck me from behind while I was tied to the floor.” Watts shivers and twitches, repulsed by the memory. “They didn't give a shit, didn't care that it was me. What was the point? If you're that fucking lonely, if you want it bad enough--”

“You object to being used that way, Jenner? You believe that you deserve dignity? Astonishing, isn't it, that you've finally come around.”

“I cried when they buried you.” Watts trembles with suppressed anger and horror, is more terrified by the reserves of rage inside him than anything else that's happened to him in these dreams. “I cried my eyes out over your open coffin. I thought it was a tragedy, that you were gone too soon. I called you a good man. I loved you.”

“There's no accounting for taste, I suppose. Jenner, my little fool.”

“What are you saying? What do you want?” Finally, no answer. Watts slowly realizes he's awake, lying on the lumpy couch in the TV room. He's alone now, but he can hear Frost singing and rattling dishes in the kitchen, and then Frost is sitting down next to him and handing him a mug of tea, his apron on and clouds of flour rising from his clothes.

“Good morning there, lonesome dove. Sleep all right?”

“It wasn't that bad. Thanks.” Watts sips at the hot tea, burns his tongue, nestles the mug between his thighs for safekeeping while he waits for it to cool. “He came back. I don't think I can get rid of him. I don't even know what he wants.”

“Did he speak to you? What kinds of things does he say?” Frost, looking concerned, reaches out and swipes Watts' hair away from his forehead with one floury hand.

“He... I dunno. Maybe Andrej was right.” Watts pushes away Frost's hand, thinking of Falk, thinking that he can't really stand to be touched by anyone right now. Frost holds his hand to his chest as if wounded, looking at him with big dark sorrowful eyes. Watts hates it when Frost looks at him like that, like Watts is supposed to know that whatever he's just said or done would depress the living shit out of him.

“Andrej was right? What was he right about?”

“About me. I mean, how Falk in the dreams is really me. My own insecurities coming back to haunt me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the kinds of things he says. How I was lonely, I was sad, I just wanted men to pay attention to me, I'd do anything for attention and look where it got me. I was a whore and now I'm a slave. I mean, I like belonging to Mac. I don't feel bad about that, but maybe there's a part of me deep down that thinks I should.”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Frost looks at him again, kindly this time, and reaches out and brushes his cheek with one big callused thumb. “No one thinks of you like that. None of us do.”

“Maybe that's what I really think of myself. Maybe, deep down I mean, maybe I'm ashamed.”

“Shame isn't a very useful emotion. It's not going to get you anywhere. It's like having an albatross around your neck, like whatsitcalled, that poem with the Ancient Mariner.”

“What's an albatross?”

“You know, it's this really big seabird.”

“Why would you have it around your neck?”

“For a punishment, I think. Or maybe it was some kind of curse. Anyway, I have to be getting back to my cinnamon buns.” Frost kisses the top of Watts' head and disappears with a whoosh of apron and a whirl of flour, and Watts settles moodily into the couch to drink his tea and wonder what the hell he's going to do about Falk. He remembers stories he's read or heard about the restless dead, wandering spirits, seeking something; a missing body part, a favorite possession, an apology. Falk doesn't seem to want anything, except to torment him.

The next night, Win returns from his trip. Watts is overjoyed to see him again, Frost cooks his favorite dinner (macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes, no gravy) and for a while everything seems jovially normal. Then Watts ends up in Win's room, undressing for bed, and finds himself- just like the dreams-- completely frozen in place and unable to move. An unseen pair of hands caresses him, moves lingeringly and lovingly down from his shoulders to his waist, roves extensively over his ass. Ghostly fingers wrap around his cock and plunge into his ass, and he can't speak or make a sound, can't so much as whimper as he's jerked and fucked right there on the rug next to Win's bed.

The hands are rough with him, shove him forward until he stumbles into the bed and pitches over onto it, landing on his elbows and stomach with his legs in the air. And that's how he knows it's Falk doing this to him, and how he finds out that ghosts apparently have cocks. This one does, anyway, and wherever some part of whatever Falk is now touches him, he feels a strange prickling and freezing sensation; strange, exhilarating, just this side of unbearable, like back in Montana in midwinter when he was a kid walking barefoot in the snow just to see what it felt like. Falk's breath (he can't still breathe, Watts thinks, there must be a better word) against his neck is likewise freezing, making the small hairs on Watts' skin stand up, and Falk's ghostly spunk is like ice inside him when he finally comes and releases Watts from his death grip. Then he's gone, and there isn't a trace left of what just happened; Watts touches himself gingerly, runs both hands over his ass and inner thighs, but there isn't so much as a smear of moisture. He hoists himself to his feet and staggers back over to the bureau just as Win appears in the doorway.

“The fuck's the matter with you?”

“Nothing, Mac.” This is obviously not the case, but Watts has no convenient explanation for why he's hunched over naked in the corner of the bedroom, gasping for breath like he just got plowed to within an inch of his life and barely able to hold himself upright.


	4. Chapter 4

“What were you doing?” Win's already removed his tie and begun unbuttoning his shirt, and Watts wishes he could go over there and grab it and tear it off and just kiss and nibble on Win's big sexy arms until Win's inspired to fuck him and they both forget about Falk and his beyond-the-grave bullshit.

“Jerking off.” Watts straightens up, hands on his hips, taking deep snorting breaths through his nose and trying like hell to look casual. Win just shakes his head, turns his back to Watts, and sits down on the bed; not only the bed, as it turns out, but also the business end of the diamond tie pin that Frost had left lying there. Watts cringes sympathetically, stays as far out of the way as he can as Win stomps and swears around the room, the gold pin still visibly sticking out of the seat of his pants. When Watts glances back at the doorway, Frost is standing there in his bathrobe and slippers, looking concerned and vaguely guilty.  
“Well, this is interesting.”

“Go to bed, John.” Win's still fuming around in circles, both hands down the back of his pants and feeling for whatever just stuck him.

“You sat on that tie pin, didn't you?”

“What are you talking about?” Win's finally managed to dislodge the thing, and Watts hears the soft plink as it falls to the floor.

John steps forward, crouches down and picks up the tiny object; he holds it to the light, and Win grabs for his glasses. Watts sits down on the edge of the bed and hides his face in his hands, unwilling to watch whatever's going to happen next.

“Remember this?”

“Where the hell did you get that?”

“It was here.”

“Why-- you mean-- what was it doing in my room? Watts, did you-- Watts?”

“What?” Cautiously, Watts lowers his hands from his face. Win's facing him, looking stunned and vague, eyes sort of watery behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

“Did you take this pin off Leo's tie? Out of his coffin?”

“Now Wadleigh, that's just--”

“Shut up, John. How else would it have ended up here? There's no other logical explanation, is there? Someone had to have taken it. I never would've touched it, you weren't there, and Vincent--”

“What about Vincent? And Silke, and McGuigan, and Edison, and that other one. There were plenty of other mourners there. However, I'm afraid that's not what happened, Wadleigh. No one removed anything from Leo's person. You remember, don't you? You saw this pin in his tie, just as it should be, just before they closed the lid of his coffin.”

“What the fuck is going on here? Watts? Look at me, will you?” Watts has his hands in front of his face again, has flopped onto his back on the bed and is trying to shut everything out; the voices, the accusations, the memory of Falk's-- what was it, not his flesh, not anymore- moving against his skin, Falk's freezing-cold hands (something like hands, the memory of hands at least) touching his body.

“He came back,” Watts says; Win blinks in slow bewilderment, and Frost snatches the pin from his open hand. “Falk. He's still here.”

“I don't believe this. What kind of bullshit have you been feeding him, John? You've gone too far with the tarot cards and astrology charts and shit. It's not good for him, you're fucking with his head and you know it.”

“Christ, Wadleigh. The boy's not simple. He knows fact from fiction well enough. The cards and charts and everything, the ghost stories, none of that means anything. It's purely coincidental that we seem to have stumbled upon the real thing.”

“So just what the fuck is the real thing? This isn't just you playing pretend anymore?”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you. In all my occultist dabblings, I've never once made any actual contact with any sort of world beyond this one, nor was I trying to with any sort of earnestness. I never believed. I mean, I didn't explicitly disbelieve, either, but this is different. This isn't the same thing at all, and it needs to be dealt with.”

“It's true, Mac.” Watts faces Win, and starts talking, and once he starts he can't stop. The dreams, all of them, the sleep paralysis, Falk's voice in his ear, Falk's icy hands reaching beyond death, grasping for him, touching him.

“Bullshit,” Win says; but not like he really doesn't believe him. More like he's way out his depth, has no idea how to deal with any of what's just been heaped on him. Watts knows the feeling, has no idea how to get Falk to back off. He couldn't say no to the guy when he was alive; how is he supposed to get Falk to listen to him now that he's dead?

“I'm afraid this is what we're dealing with, Wadleigh.”

“Why don't we just...” Win screws his eyes shut, runs both hands through his hair and sets it standing on end. “Can we just go to bed now? We'll figure this out in the morning. Maybe Leo won't-- maybe he won't try anything if I'm here with you.” He turns to Frost, still lingering in the doorway with his robe.

“You want to join us then, John?”

“I was afraid you'd never ask.” Frost smiles, throws his robe off and climbs into bed in his undershirt and pajama trousers, the corny ones with the pattern of multicolored roosters. Soft flannel, and Watts still naked, leaning against him, and he's suddenly exhausted, too tired to keep his eyes open. Win hems him in on the other side, sighing as he comes to rest, and Watts relaxes, snug between the two men he's loved most in his life.

Miraculously, he doesn't dream of anything that night. He wakes in the morning, finds the bed empty; Win's gone to work, Frost downstairs to make breakfast. Watts' collar still hangs on its nail in the wall; the diamond tie pin rests where Win placed it, on the rough wooden surface of the apple-box nightstand. Watts picks it up, and it's warm in his hands, soft somehow, as if the metal were liquid.

Then-- shit, he should've realized something was wrong- he sees Falk. Not transparent or floating, but solid, opaque, in the sinewy flesh. Sitting on the end of the bed in his sloppy day-off clothes, stained undershirt and ripped nylon pants like the ones runners wear sometimes. There he is, plain as day, confined by gravity, sinking into the mattress with his own weight; Watts can see the divot, see the drapery of sheets and blankets pulled into his orbit. Falk is suddenly and inescapably here, in Win's room.

“Hello, Jenner.”

“Shit.”  
“What is the matter, beautiful boy? Not happy to see me?” He purses his lips smugly, runs a hand through his hair. Watts is through with superstitions, done quivering in fear and indecision; he flings himself at Falk, collides with his somehow warm and solid body, wraps both arms around him and holds on tight.

“I am-- I did-- I missed you. Fuck, I missed you.”

“Sh, Jenner. I missed you too. It's lonely there under the ground. Too much like the mines, you know? Where I worked before, in the dark. All the dust, I couldn't breathe, all the lifting and hauling and pushing. That's what ruined my wind, you know. That's why I died the way I died.”

“I don't want to hear about it. How you died.”

“I must say I don't relish it myself. Jenner.” Falk's big hand is in his hair, stroking and smoothing, and Falk speaks to him soothingly in that raspy voice with its vaguely-- Watts guesses- Scandinavian accent. Letting vowels linger, pulling consonants in, softening the harsher sounds of the English words with the curves of his lips.

“It's like an allegory, isn't it? You and I. Life and death, spring and winter, Persephone and Hades. You are the blue-green planet, baroque with life, and I am the barren moon that follows you. That longs for you to see me, to grant me some sort of meaning.”

“I sort of never know what the hell you're talking about.”

“Like old times, then.”

“I guess.”

“Do you love me, Jenner?”

“Do I love you?”

“Did you ever?”

“I don't know. I felt like-- it all happened really suddenly, it was weird to feel like I was supposed to love people when I never did before. I wasn't used to it. I loved my gran and the cat and the horses and the dogs and that was it. How was I supposed to love someone who didn't even know me, who didn't know my favorite song or the way I liked my coffee or anything about me really. How was someone supposed to love me, if they couldn't see the way I started, where I came from? How can you love someone if you don't know everything?” Watts is crying now, but he doesn't really care. Falk's already seen him cry; if he was present at his own funeral, he's seen the most extravagant display of misery that Watts has ever permitted himself to indulge in.

“Who knows everything? How is that possible?” Falk is stroking Watts' back now, his lips brushing Watts' ear, his breath soft as he speaks. “Who knows everything? That's too much to ask. We love the best we can with what we have.”

“I love you.” Watts doesn't know if it's true or not, but that's never kept him from saying it. “I don't care. I'm glad you came back, even if it is just my imagination or something I'm dreaming or fuck knows what.”

“You're not dreaming.” Falk smiles, and he looks so handsome, the way Watts remembers him with the wrinkles around his eyes and the graying stubble on his cheeks and his teeth showing kind of sharp and pointed on the ends which Watts always thought was sexy and Win thought was further evidence that Falk was more closely related to some kind of flesh-eating space reptile than to actual human beings.

“Listen to me, Jenner. I'm going to fuck you again, and then I'll be satisfied-- no, listen to me, boy. One more time, one last fuck, and then I can sleep in my earth again until you come to join me, which you won't do until another fifty years have gone by. You will be an old old man, you will live to bury Wadleigh and old John Frost and Andrej and his woman and children will live to bury you. Do you understand? You won't hear or see any sign of me for fifty years, and then I will come and take your hand and we'll be gone together.”

“I guess that sounds all right.” Watts is thinking about what Falk said, the fifty years going by and Win dying and Frost dying, and fifty years is a hell of a long time, more than he's lived so far not counting the time he spent under the ice. Watts already feels like he's lived forever, like he's spent so many long dull days just surviving, so many nights lying still and hoping for a chance of sleep. Fifty more years: how can he go on that long? What will he do, after Win and Frost are in the ground? Will they come back to him too?

“All right?” Falk pulls Watts toward him, both hands anomalously warm on his bare shoulders. “We've said good night before. The years will go by, won't they? I'd like you to remember me. Keep this for me, Jenner.” Falk's picked up the diamond tie pin, and he slides it into Watts' hair, deftly staking a loose curl in place. Watts leans into him, slips his hands under the thin-worn material of Falk's greasy old undershirt, feels the thick hair covering his chest.

“That's my pretty boy.” Falk kisses him, and pretty soon he's got his cock out, and the fucking part goes the way it always did, except this time it seems too fast to really be satisfying; or maybe Watts only feels that way because he knows Falk's going to leave.

“Goodnight,” Falk says again, and Watts thinks about how funny that is, how death and sleep are kind of related if you think about it. Like siblings, twins, similar enough to be mistaken for each other. Falk takes Watts' hand, and his is still warm, is warm right up until the moment Watts can't feel it anymore and Falk's whole corporeal presence just quits, just suddenly and silently stops existing.

“Fuck, Leo,” Watts says to the empty room. “Goodnight.” And no one answers him, but maybe Falk is still listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
> 
> Pablo Neruda


End file.
